The Debt
by Green Amethyst
Summary: Natasha has accepted an undercover assignment in an attempt to trick two arms dealers into helping her land the bigger fish that SHIELD wants to fry. However, the operation was hurried and a crucial detail was missed. Instead of guarding Natasha from a distance, Clint finds himself beaten, captured, and threated with death. It's up to Natasha and her skill set to save them both.
1. Chapter 1

It was all the secretary's fault. Some flighty little pierce of baggage had gotten the schedule mixed up and someone had been in too much of a hurry to double check the details. So at the same time Natasha was settling into her room, the two weapons dealers she was playing in hopes of catching that bigger fish walked in on Clint Barton bugging their room.

Clint was quick and agile. But two thugs, weapons already drawn as the came through the door, there wasn't much he could do but capitulate in hopes that it might buy him time and a better chance later on. Reflexively, he looked to the window as he put his arms up and hit his knees (times like this I wish I _could _fly, he thought). The chance that Clint had been hoping for, he quickly saw he wasn't going to get it. The two were smarter than he gave them credit for. Whatever potential action they read in Clint's lithe body, which always seemed so perfectly poised between tense stillness and explosive motion, they weren't taking any chances. Both covered him as they tossed him the chains he was to bind himself with. One set locked around his ankles. The other, they directed him, was to cuff his hands behind his back. Clint fastened them right. No use antagonizing them further still.

"Now face down," snarled the elder brother, Tobias. "

And Clint fell forward onto his stomach, put his face to the floor, and mouthed the name "Tasha," just once, into the stale carpet that reeked of cigarette smoke and roach spray as he waited for a bullet to slam through his skull.

The younger brother, Pieter, crossed the room and stood one heavily on Clint's neck with just enough weight to remind him how easily it could be broken. Pieter bent and placing the gun squarely against Clint's temple, checked the cuffs to make sure they were fastened securely. Satisfied, he stepped back and sat heavily upon the bed, keeping his gun trained on Clint lay still, trying to breath evenly despite the panic knotting in his stomach, as he heard Tobias pick up the phone.

"We have a problem," Tobias snarled down the line in heavily accented English. "If you still want this deal you will come down and explain the vermin we have found in our room."

Tasha, or Maria, as the brothers knew her, was there in seconds, breezing through the door, for all appearances unarmed and unconcerned.

"I don't like threats, especially regarding my deals, so what's the problem?" she asked, her voice hard and cold and ever so slightly threatening.

Tobias was not so cool. Angry and red-faced he crossed the floor to where Barton lay and kicked him squarely in the gut. "Roll over," he growled, "so the lady can get a good look at you." Pieter sat silent, gun still trained on Barton, but watching Natasha's face carefully.

Clint did as he was told, but turned his face away from Natasha, looking past Tobias' feet towards the opposite wall. So that when Tobias slammed his foot into Clint's face, he connected squarely with his nose and the heavy crunch of breaking bone reverberated through the tension-laden air. With the kick, Clint's head snapped from left to right and Natasha got a good look at his face already covered in the blood his broken nose and his eyes glazed and grey with pain.

She never even flinched.

"He's not with me," she said. "I say we kill him and make it hurt."

Pieter smiled, pushed himself up off the bed, and strolled over to where Clint lay, curling in on himself and gagging on the blood running down the back of his throat. Never breaking eye contact with the Black Widow, he bent down and grasping Clint's hair, snapped his head back and exposed his throat. Clint froze as he pulled a knife from his pocket and placed it on Clint's throat. "Yes, we will. But, you see, I still trying to decide if you will join him or not," Pieter said. He pressed the blade into the tender skin under Clint's chin with enough force to bring just a trickle of blood. Clint lay gasping, head still turned, looking at no one and waiting for Natasha to make her play.

Natasha

I was not having a good day. The mission was hurried, half-assed, slapdash. An amateur cover and a high risk sting put together by fumbling minions who had been caught by surprise when Alexander Sidorov, a high end Russians arms dealer, had apparently returned from either the grave or obscurity to make a deal with Tobias and Pieter Braun. Known as the Brothers, two German arms dealers who liked big guns and hard alcohol, hey had other business interests, most of which involved killing or enslaving women that kept them on SHIELD's radar and on my hit list.. They were nasty pieces of work. SHIELD wanted Sidorov. I wanted The Brothers more,. So this was a desirable assignment. But we needed to hurry and it got sloppy. And the minute I walked into that hotel room and saw Clint laying there so calmly I knew he would be the one to pay the price if I didn't steel my nerves, open my mouth and make it damn good.

I was already looking forward to killing the Brothers. But when Tobias kicked Barton, I knew I would have to give Clint first dibs. And after he broke Barton's nose, I decided I would let Clint kill him, bring him back, and then do it again, nice and slow. Pieter with his peering, calculating eyes and groping hands was going to finger fuck his brain before I was done with him. And Barton was walking out of this whatever I had to do, and they weren't going to lay one more finger on him either.

I owed him a lot more. But I owed him that much, at least.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint

So then Natasha stabs me.

One minute she and Pieter are locked in a stare down. Next thing I know she pulls a knife from somewhere and with the casual concern she might show an onion she was dicing (if the woman ever cooked) she embeds it up to the hilt in my shoulder.

Pieter jumps back and I feel his knife leave my throat just before Natasha puts herself face to face with me, clamps her calloused fingers over my mouth and twists the knife. I can't help the scream of agony that comes bursting out of my mouth.

"Jesus," mutters Tobias.

"So now, I am going to ask you some questions and I suggest you answer them honestly," Natasha hisses. "Do you understand?"

But before I can say yes, no, or fuck you she turns the God damn knife again.

"Like I said, if you want out of here alive only the truth will leave your mouth," she whispers.

I'm shaking and nauseous and my vision is going spotty from the pain and the shock. But I manage to lock eyes with her and say as clearly as I can, "you want the truth?" "The truth is I'm going to kill you the first chance I get."

And then I pass out.

Natasha

I learned early on exactly how much someone has to lose when love is part of the equation. My family, the life I knew, my innocence, my security-all gone in an instant. I had thought love was for children, never once realizing that I held that belief because I was a child the last time I felt it to give or given. Sometimes a prisoner grows so used to their cell they no longer see the bars.

So safety and love and having someone to call your own was like a well-worn blanket or a story that began "once upon a time." Something to revisit and linger over before putting it resolutely away and getting on with real life.

And so I said, until Barton walked into my life, took aim, and didn't fire.

Love is for children; I believed that. But it wasn't. Our love affair as it grew was a very grown up affair indeed, raw and powerful, gristle and bone, flesh and blood and sex. Sometimes I wanted him so badly I would ache. Sometimes I wanted to push him away so hard he would never find his way back. And always, always, he had my trust.

I never understood how he, who had lost just as much as I had, could still be capable of love and trust and loyalty and devotion, and such honesty. He was stoic and centered. Rock where I was flame. He could sit in my center and not be burned. And so I closed around him and over him., trapping him in a way. But also cradling him, keeping him in the only soft, safe place I had left. And I guarded him fiercely, as he did me, for he was the one-the only-thing I had worth fighting for, worth living for. And I gladly would have died before I let anyone touch him. He was my north and every aspect of my life moved to point the way he asked me to go. He was my direction and my destination.

So ask me what it cost for me to hurt him, even to save him. To see the confusion and fear in his eyes as he looked into me. Ask me exactly what it took for me to injure the person whose safety and security I would always and forever put above my own. Ask me what it cost to become one of the people who would feature in the nightmares he dreamt almost every night, crying out in his sleep and only calming when held him close enough to feel my warmth and to hear my heart beating.

I am not sure I could calculate the cost.

I had bought us, maybe, a half an hour before he awoke I knew. I pulled my knife from his shoulder and the Brothers moved him to a chair. Secured his ankles to either leg and tied a rope about his waist. His arms they tied so tightly back his chest looked as if it might crack in half. His blood clotted and his eyes fluttered and the Brothers stepped back as I moved forward. I was going to save him, even if I decimated myself, and us, entirely before I was done. 


End file.
